Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Designers search for fashion statements in 2017
Marc Jacobs interprets hip-hop while Ralph Lauren sticks with formula
TNEW YORK he last show here for the fall 2017 season was mounted Thursday afternoon by Marc Jacobs and was inspired by hip-hop. Jacobs saw the documentary “Hiphop Evolution” several months ago, and it made him nostalgic for his high school years in New York — when rap was emerging as popular music, a new fashion aesthetic was being created, and the definition of Americana was shifting.
His stripped-down production began at the stroke of the hour, when a single model began her walk across the cracked wooden floor of the Park Avenue Armory. There was no elaborate set design. In fact, there was no set at all. There were just two long rows of chairs lined up facing each other, only 326 in total. There was no music. The models walked in silence, without even the soft clicks of cameras — photographers were asked to wait outside to capture the models as they emerged.
It was a gorgeous and wondrous 10 minutes.
That’s how long it took for the women to saunter down the runway with their woven coats with furry collars, their gold sequined minis, flared trousers, throw-back sweat suits, huge platform boots, giant gold hoop earrings and Stephen Jonesdesigned takes on Kangol caps.
It was a diverse cast of models walking in this show with its late ’70s/early ’80s retro vibe. They evoked a stylish, city girl look from the time before hip-hop turned ghetto fabulous and triggered an arms race for Gucci and Louis Vuitton. There was more style back then than fashion — at least the kind that came with fancy French and Italian labels.
The collection didn’t reproduce the clothes of the era. Jacobs isn’t doing hip-hop, per se. This was that time period as seen through the eyes of Jacobs, a New York City kid attending the High School of Art and Design. It was his memory — both accurate and false.
Or, as he put it in the show notes, “an acknowledgement and gesture of my respect for the polish and consideration applied to fashion from a generation that will forever be the foundation of youth culture street style.”
With this collection, Jacobs dove headlong into the murky waters of cultural appropriation, a phrase used here with some trepidation. American popular culture, after all, does not exist in a series of hermetically sealed bubbles. Forms of dress and music spring up because of cross-fertilization. Sometimes styles are born in direct opposition to another.
But last season, Jacobs caused consternation with his use of multicolored wool dreadlocks on the runway. His beauty team said the inspiration was punk and Boy George, among other things. But nowhere in that mix did they mention black people. And that omission caused outrage.
Typically, Jacobs does not leave mission statements for his audience. So the inclusion of an insert explaining the source of his inspiration, a page headlined, “Respect,” was an exception and served as a direct rebuke to those guardians of culture who would stand ready to call him disrespectful.
But there was no need for a statement: There was beauty and sophistication in this collection. There was humor. The collection wasn’t a caricature. And it wasn’t mocking. If anything, it struck a note of awe.
Jacobs served as a fine finish to the season here, with a collection that was deeply American in a manner that felt vibrant and particularly relevant. Hiphop, after all, was nurtured in urban centers by black and brown youth. It spoke of ingenuity, ambition, protest and confidence. Now, of course, it is a global language — one that speaks just as profoundly to immigrants in the suburbs of Paris as it does to ambitious, middle-class young men recording mixtapes.
CALENDAR CHANGE
Ralph Lauren, with its enormous cultural footprint, speaks of a different vision of America. There is nothing messy, tumultuous, tacky or ugly in his version. He presented what he calls his